Book
by EoEDaD
Summary: An unfortunate man is given a job entirely beyond his means, and a dragon learns what it is to feel grief. Or to feel and deny grief. But he never really learned how to feel, anyway. RaeMal.


Dear god, I've been away from this fandom for too long. I _missed_ writing this. ::tries to sneak in the back door:: CLAMP? Why, I've never heard of them. Certainly never abandoned TT to write fic for their stuff...

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**A Simple White Book**

The man was nothing more than a common drunk, pale and heavyset but not quite overweight, one of the many petty thieves that frequented Jump City's seedier bars—too inconsequential to have actually faced the Teen Titans, but malicious enough to jump at the offer made by a tall, black-cloaked man that collared him outside of a club as he was being tossed out by the bouncer. The deal was simple: sixty thousand dollars in gold bars (an odd currency, to be sure, but he didn't care—money was money, after all) in exchange for some of the contents of a recently deceased Titan's room. The man had a specific list of everything he wanted, and pointed out that the sooner, the better; the other Titans would be too busy mourning their late teammate to worry about security for now, but that window of opportunity would close quickly.

As soon as the rather smashed man was able to translate these instructions into his own, somewhat less educated dialect (which involved far more profanities and far fewer polysyllabic words than the other man had used), he staggered off immediately. Now that the idea had been proposed, he couldn't see how some other, flashier villain hadn't taken advantage of the same scheme—the thought that they might respect the grief of even their enemies never so much as crossed his mind. He certainly had no such scruples.

Just as the mysterious figure had predicted, the Titans had neglected to set the elaborate alarm system, relying solely on the locked doors to guard their home while they kept watch over their friend's body. As the man pried open the front entrance with a conveniently located crowbar, he tried to remember which of the heroes had died. The creepy one, he thought vaguely. The one that was always hanging back, but for some reason constantly seemed to have more strength than she used. Stupid. If you have power, you use it. (How he arrived at this conclusion, even through a haze of beer and whiskey, was an interesting question, because it was certain that this man had never had the slightest power over anything in his life.)

Once again following the stranger's advice, he carefully (or at least as carefully as one can when one has imbibed as much alcohol as he had) made his way through the building, resisting the urge to pocket a few of the more valuable-looking trinkets lying about. Compared to what he had been promised, this was nothing.

Eventually he came to the girl's room, his unsteady footsteps sounding abnormally loud as he traversed the silent corridors. He stared blankly at the door for a few minutes until he remembered the tool he had been given, pulling it out and staring at it. It didn't look like anything he had ever used, but then, who knew with these magic types?

He shrugged and tossed the small, perfectly round golden sphere at the crack where the metal met the floor and watched, astounded, as the entire door and a good part of the wall seemed to melt right into the capsule. Huh. Maybe the guy would sell him another one if he pulled this off right.

Beyond the wall was a gloomy darkness, and he noticed that he was trying to walk on tiptoe only when he nearly overbalanced and crashed into a wall. The room was _freaky_, all incense and books and old, rotting statues that seemed to take on a sinister air when faced with this unwanted visitor. He gulped. Maybe there was something to the stories currently circulating through the city's underworld about the girl having evil powers. He didn't even want to try to imagine what she would do to someone she caught trying to steal from her. But the stupid bitch was dead, and even necromancers couldn't resurrect themselves, according to a local authority on the occult from one of his more recent bars. At least, he thought that was what the guy had said. He had been rather preoccupied with eyeing a pretty woman and her expensive necklace three seats down from him. That little piece had earned him quite a few drinks.

To distract himself, he pulled out the list and squinted at it. The flowery, ornate writing was almost too much for him in his inebriated state, but he could just barely make out the letters. First on the list was a mirror—a mirror? What the hell could a mirror be good for? No self-respecting man would ever want a girl's primping tool, but as long as said man had money, he wasn't going to mention that fact.

"Stupid kids," he slurred as he grabbed the rather disturbing-looking item from a desk. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing that you could buy in a normal department store. "Goin' off n' cryin' over th' bitch… n' leavin' all this… this…" He paused as he stuffed a figurine into his pocket. It wasn't on the list, technically, but it looked valuable, and it wasn't like the girl was going to miss it. "… this stuff… good stuff, too… Bastard that offed her did the world a favor… freaky girl…"

He froze as a light suddenly came on, illuminating the room. He awkwardly twisted around, trying at once to keep the hand with the mirror behind his back and to conceal the gold spilling from his pockets, certain that the Titans had gotten back and were going to kill him.

But it was the chest at the foot of the bed that was glowing an eerie, otherworldly green. "Huh? What the…"

It exploded, sending slivers of wood flying throughout the room. The man lurched backwards, dropping the mirror and throwing his arms up to protect his face. "Gah—who—what—"

All of his speculations about black magic came rushing back to him, and he began to awkwardly crawl away from the debris, staring with no small amount of terror at the book that was lying in the center of the scorch mark on the floor.

The pages flew open almost violently. Crimson eyes, incandescent with rage, stared out at him, and it was a glare that would stay with him for many nightmares to come. "You pathetic, lowbred _fool_. How _dare_ you?"

He blinked, wondering if perhaps that last shot of whiskey had been a bad idea. The book—was the book _talking?_ Why was the book talking? "Huh?"

The eyes narrowed as the (obviously malevolent) entity refined its opinion of him. "Drunken moron. Why are you desecrating Raven's room? Who sent you?" The tone was undoubtedly powerful and undeniably furious, though it seemed to have figured out that the mere idea of entering the Tower was far beyond the man's mental capacities at this point.

_Raven_. So that was the girl's name. He had thought it was something that started with an "R."

The idea that he should be wary of this strange being was overshadowed by his drink-heightened sense of pride, however, and he said belligerently, "I'm—I'm not a… a moron. Like _you,_" he added, with a sense of victory at the insult, idiotic though it may have sounded to a more sober mind. "You're jus' one of those, those hallunishins, but I c'n think n' talk n'—"

"_Who. Sent. You."_

The man made the mistake of looking into the fury-filled eyes and instantly and completely broke down. No beer-induced hostility could match up to the danger in that look. Though sudden, terrified sobs, he gasped out, "I dunno, I dunno, I c'n take you to 'im but I dunno…" Those fiery orbs were no hallucination, he realized too late, and he would have been infinitely better off if they were.

Whatever being it was that resided in the damned book seemed to still, the hatred fading slightly, though still enough to warn even the most drunk of all men that they shouldn't cross this creature. "She's… dead, right?" it asked, the barest of pauses present before it pronounced the second word.

This sign of weakness galvanized the man, and as though to try to make up for his earlier cowardice, he declared, "Yah, n' good riddance. What, you her ill—illish—her secret lover or sumpm'?"

He was thrown back into a bookcase before he could continue the train of thought. His head cracked sharply against a bust of some famous dead guy, and he slid down to the floor, barely conscious.

"_No,_" the voice declared, menace dripping from every syllable. "But you would do well to speak respectfully of her, all the same."

With a clarity and courage that can only be found when someone is drunk, in pain, and fairly certain that they won't be awake to deal with the repercussions of their words, the man said, "No, then, but you wish you'd've been, eh?—"

And then sank to the ground in a dead faint.

Malchior could do nothing but glare at the man's prone form and wait for him to wake up, deliberately refusing to think about the man's last words. What did the lowly, inebriated moron know about him, anyways? He_didn't_ care for her, not in the slightest. The only reason her wanted to find her murderer—the reason he was now imagining the slowest and bloodiest deaths possible for the man—was that he had wanted to kill her himself. She had bested him once, and now he had no chance of proving that it was simply a matter of luck.

So he would find the mage who had killed her, who had hired the still-comatose idiot to brave (or, more accurately, blunder through) any traps Raven may have set in her room. He would find him, and he would trick him into releasing him through some means or another, and then he would kill him. But it wasn't that he cared about the girl who had locked him back in this prison, of course not. He just resented the blow to his pride, the way any good mortal-hating dragon would do. There was nothing personal about his desire to rip the nameless sorcerer's spleen out through his throat. Simply pride.

Of course.

… Malchior wasn't quite sure that he believed himself (something about the lingering pain in his chest seemed to say otherwise), but it didn't really matter. She was dead, the mage would soon follow, the world would be his, and it would be done.

Perhaps, if he was lucky, his irritating persistent sense of grief would die with them.

Somehow, though, he doubted it.

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As I said, I've been so out of the loop it's like a different universe, so... help me get back into it, please. Heh. No, I haven't learned subtlety while I've been gone. 


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